Box 21 aka The Vault

by Anders Roslund

  Then she started speaking, beginning somewhere in the middle, with a remembered impression, and afterwards unravelling their story. She took him on a journey to a world that he thought he knew something about and made him realise he knew nothing. She cried and whispered for a while, but she couldn’t stop talking and he didn’t interrupt. This was the first time she had described to someone else what her adult life so far had been; it was the first time she had listened to herself. He listened too and was increasingly amazed at her strength and her integrity. Despite everything, she had stayed whole.

  He waited until she had finished or maybe couldn’t bear to say any more. Until she fell silent, her unseeing eyes empty. Now it was over, she was done and would never again tell her story on demand.

  Sven reached down for his briefcase and put it on the table.

  ‘I’ve brought a few things which don’t belong to me.’

  He took out a small brown box and two neatly folded dresses.

  ‘I believe these things are Lydia’s.’

  She stared at the box, at the dresses. She knew where they had been. There was still a question in her eyes when she met Sven’s. He nodded, confirming that she was right.

  ‘Your locker is empty now. Let to someone else. I wanted to give you these. I suppose the dresses are hers. And the box too. It contains forty thousand Swedish kronor, in smallish notes.’

  Alena didn’t move, said nothing. ‘Do what you like. Keep the money. Or give it to her family, if there is anyone left.’

  She leaned forward and caressed the smooth, black material of one of the dresses.

  All that was left.

  ‘I went to her home yesterday. I wanted to see her mother. Lydia often talked about her.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘She is dead. She died two months ago.’

  Sven waited. Then he gently pushed Lydia’s belongings towards Alena.

  ‘I would like to know more about Lydia. Who she was. All I have seen is a badly beaten human being who stood up again and took hostages.’

  Alena shook her head. ‘It’s enough now.’

  ‘I think some part of me understands why she acted as she did.’

  ‘No more, not today. Not ever.’

  They stayed for a while longer, without talking much. The waiter finally asked them to please leave, the restaurant was closing. They got up and were just about to go when the front door opened and a man in his early twenties came in. Sven gave him a quick once-over. He was tall, blond and suntanned, easy-going, not confrontational. Alena walked over to him, kissed his cheek and put her arm through his.

  ‘Janoz. I left him. He was still here. I am so grateful for that.’

  She kissed his cheek again and pulled him closer as she told Sven how Janoz had tried to find her for seven long months, spending time and money until he had to give up.

  And she laughed. For the first time that evening, she laughed. Sven smiled and congratulated them both. For a moment, at least, not everything seemed hopeless.

  ‘What about Lydia? Was there someone waiting for her?’

  ‘There was someone called Vladi.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘He got what he wanted from her.’

  She said no more and he didn’t ask. They went out in the street. Before going their different ways Sven Sundkvist repeated his promise that she would never again have to speak to the Swedish police about this case.

  A few steps only and then she turned round.

  ‘One more thing.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Today, in the aquarium. The interview. Why was that necessary?’

  ‘The case is still open. The police have to gather all the evidence.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I have no problem with that. But you, the police, you already knew.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What you asked, it was the same as the other policeman.’

  ‘The other policeman?’

  ‘He was there in the flat too. Older than you.’

  ‘His name is Grens.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘The same questions?’

  ‘Everything I told you this afternoon in the aquarium I have already said to him. The same questions, the same answers.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘You told him about Lydia calling you from the ward and the mortuary? About how you went to look for the things she wanted? About the video from the locker? About the gun and the explosives? About how you left it in the hospital toilet?’

  ‘All of it.’

  It was two o’clock in the morning by the time Sven was ready for the narrow hotel bed. He hadn’t got anything for Jonas. He decided to sleep for a few hours and then go to St John’s Lutheran church and light a candle for Lydia Grajauskas and her mother, who had been buried there. Then take a taxi to the airport. There was a duty-free shop there, where he could get sweets, the jelly ones and the shiny gold chocolate bars.

  He lay in the dark. The window was open on a silent Klaipeda.

  He knew his time was running out.

  He must decide. The truth was there and now he had to decide what to do with it.

  SUNDAY 9 JUNE

  He had test-fucked the two new girls and they hadn’t been up to much.

  True, they were practically virgins, apart from that incident in the ferry cabin, and weren’t actually too bad; they seemed to be getting the hang of it. It was their third day in the Völund Street flat and it wouldn’t be long now before they too serviced twelve a day, like that mad bitch Grajauskas and her dirty little friend had. Or had done, until they lost their cool and went berserk.

  The new girls needed to get their act together, though. Not hot and eager enough, he reckoned. Customers paying good money had a right to feel they were attractive and drove girls crazy, and that they were part of a couple, just for a while. Otherwise they might as well wank in the toilet.

  He had knocked the new girls around a bit, just to keep them in order. Just a few more days and he’d have put a stop to their snivelling. It got on his nerves, all their bloody whining.

  He had to admit it, Grajauskas and Sljusareva were pros. They got on with it, took their kit off and acted randy as hell. But it was a relief not to have their sneering grins in your face all the time. And he was tired of being called Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp every time he showed them who was boss.

  The first one would be here soon. It was just after eight in the morning.

  Mostly they came straight from home, having left the wife who was starting to get fat, just wanting to experience something, an extra stop going to work.

  He would watch the girls today. Exam time. Find out if their fucking was up to standard or if they needed some more tuition.

  He’d start with the one in Grajauskas’s room. She looked a bit like her and he had put her there deliberately; it was easier on the old customers. She was tarting herself up, as she should, and putting on the bra and panties her client wanted her to wear. So far, so good.

  A knock on the door. She looked at herself in the mirror. The locks were disabled now that he was keeping an eye, so she could open the door and greet the man outside with a smile. The client wore a grey suit of some kind of shiny material, pale blue shirt and black tie.

  She kept smiling, used her smile even when he spat or, more like, let the gob just fall to the floor in front of her feet in their high-heeled black shoes.

  He pointed.

  His finger was straight, pointing downwards.

  She bent down, still smiling as she had been told. Then down on her hands and knees, almost folding double as her nose touched the floor. Her tongue came out to take the spit into her mouth and she swallowed.

  Then she stood up straight, her eyes shut.

  The client slapped her with his open hand. She smiled and smiled at him, just as he had taught her.

  Dimitri liked what he saw, gave the thumbs-up to the man in the grey suit, got thumbs-up in return.

>   She had passed.

  He would book her up now.

  Lydia Grajauskas didn’t exist any more, not even here.

  He always felt a pang of fear when a plane touched down and the ground came into clear view, the snap when the wheels were released and the thump when they made contact. And it never got easier; rather his fear seemed to increase the more he travelled. In little planes like this one, only thirty-five seats and so cramped that you couldn’t stand up straight, take-off and landing were especially scary. He kept worrying until the bouncing changed into a smooth forward movement.

  Sven Sundkvist breathed out again and went to find his car. If the traffic was reasonably light it took only half an hour to drive from Arlanda to central Stockholm.

  Anywhere, just anywhere not to think about Ewert.

  He was sixteen for a while and with Anita who he had just met and held naked for the first time and he was with Jochum Lang who stood at the top of a staircase in Söder Hospital and beat the life out of Hilding Oldйus and with Lydia Grajauskas lying on the floor in the mortuary next to the man she had hated and with one-year-old Jonas in Phnom Penh saying Dad just two weeks later and with Alena Sljusareva sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Klaipeda in her big red sweater telling him the story of a three-year-long humiliation and with…

  With anyone at all, in order to avoid thinking about Ewert.

  Roadworks outside Sollentuna meant that the cars were confined to one lane and there was a long queue. He inched forward in low gear, sped up a bit, slowed again, came to a halt. Everyone else was doing the same, sitting and waiting for the time to pass, staring blankly ahead. They probably had their own Ewerts to think about.

  He gave an involuntary shudder, as you often do when you’re tense.

  Then he decided to take the long way round by keeping south, via Eriksberg, where she lived. Lena Nordwall.

  He needed more time to think.

  The wooden bench was hard. In his time, he had sat on it for hours on end, enduring pointless court cases against refusenik villains. They were alone in the back row and the tired room was silent. Ewert Grens quite liked the old high-security court in the Town Hall, despite the hard seats and the chattering lawyers, because coming here was a kind of settlement, confirmation that his investigation had led to something concrete and the case could be closed.

  He looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. Then the guards would open the doors, escort Lang into the room and tell him where to sit during the remand proceedings, the lead-in to a long prison sentence.

  Grens turned to Hermansson, who was sitting next to him.

  ‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’

  He had asked her to come along. Sven had disappeared without a trace, refusing to answer the phone; Bengt had been found dead on a floor, and he couldn’t offer Lena any comfort. He had wanted to be here with someone and that someone turned out to be Hermansson. He had to admit it, he really liked her. Her barbed comments about him and policewomen, or all women, should have infuriated him, but she had sounded so down-to-earth and calm, maybe because she was right. He would ask her to consider staying with the City force when her locum came to an end; he’d like to work with her again and perhaps talk to her more. She was so young that he didn’t want to come across as a dirty old man, because what he felt had nothing to do with the beauty of a younger woman, it was more a kind of surprise that there were still people around whom he wanted to get to know better.

  ‘Yes, it does. It feels good. I know what we’ve achieved, what with Lang and the hospital hostages and everything. Makes my time to Stockholm worthwhile.’

  A courtroom is a bare, dull place without judges, magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers, accused and accuser and, of course, a curious public. The drama of a crime needs to be articulated, in terms of interference and vulnerability, a process in which every word adds to the act of recognising and then measuring the offence.

  Without all that, no heart.

  Grens looked around at the dark wooden panelling, the large filthy windows facing Scheele Street, the far-too-beautiful chandelier, inhaled the smell of an old legal tome.

  ‘It’s strange, Hermansson. Dealing with professional criminals like Lang is my job, I’ve done it all my life, but I still don’t understand any more now than I did when I started. Take the way they act up under interrogation or in court. Well, clam up. Whatever we say or ask, they ignore it. Don’t know. Never heard of it. They deny everything. I can see some point in their strategy, of course. For a start, it leaves it up to us to prove that they’ve done whatever we say they’ve done.’

  Ewert Grens raised his arm, pointing at the wall opposite, at a door made of the same heavy, dark wood as the panelling.

  ‘In a few minutes Lang will come in through that door. And he’ll play the same lousy old game. He’ll say nothing, deny, mumble I don’t know, and that is, Hermansson, that is exactly why he’ll lose this time. This time that game will be the biggest mistake in his life. You see, I think he’s innocent. Of murder, that is.’

  She looked surprised, and he was just about to explain when the door opened and four guards came in, followed by a uniformed and armed constable on either side of Jochum Lang, who was handcuffed and dressed in prison-issue clothing, blue and baggy. He looked up, Ewert Grens smiled and waved.

  Then he turned to speak to Hermansson, lowering his voice.

  ‘You see, I have read the technical report and what Errfors has to say in the autopsy report. Oldйus wasn’t murdered. Lang broke five of his fingers and crushed one kneecap, as he was instructed. But no one had ordered and paid for death. I think Oldйus lost it and the wheelchair careered down the stairs and into the wall.’

  Ewert pointed ostentatiously at Lang.

  ‘Watch him. There he sits, the stupid bastard. Today he’ll get himself ten years in the jug for keeping his mouth shut. He’ll receive a sentence for murder when he could have talked himself into two and a half years for GBH.’

  Grens waved again, in the direction of his hate. Lang stared, as forcefully as the day before when they had confronted each other in his cell, before turning away. Behind him, behind his shaved skull, people were filing into the room.

  Еgestam came in last. He and Grens nodded at each other.

  Briefly, the policeman’s thoughts touched on their last meeting and he wondered what the prosecutor had made of it and of the lies he had dished out.

  He dismissed the thought – he had to – and leaned towards Hermansson, whispering: ‘I know that’s what happened. It wasn’t murder. But believe you me, I’m not going to say a word. Lang is going down. Boy, is he going down!’

  Dimitri was pleased. Both girls were young, nice smooth skin, fucked like rabbits. He had bought them on credit and decided from the outset that if they were no good he wouldn’t pay.

  But they worked. He’d pay up.

  The cop wasn’t around any more, of course, but the woman he worked with had done a good job without him. She had delivered two new whores, as agreed. She was waiting for him now. Time for his second payment, one third of the total cost: three thousand euros for each girl.

  He opened the door to Eden. A naked woman on the stage, her tits against an inflated doll, making provocative thrusts and groans, whining a bit. Everyone at the tables, all men without exception, had their hands down their trousers.

  She was sitting in her usual place, in a far corner near the fire exit.

  He went over to her table and they nodded at each other.

  She always wore the same tracksuit. Always, with the hood pulled down around her face.

  She wanted him to call her Ilona, and he did, even though it annoyed him. It wasn’t her name, he knew that.

  They didn’t talk much, never did. A few polite phrases in Russian, that was all.

  He gave her the envelope. She didn’t bother to check the money, just put it away in her bag. Agreed to meet next month.

  One more month, one more payment and then the girls would be his.
His property, both of them.

  Ewert Grens got up and waved at Hermansson that she was to follow him. They left just as the remand procedure was concluded. He hurried down the three flights of stairs to the basement and along the corridor to the underground car park. Hermansson asked where they were going, and he replied that she would soon see.

  This haste had made him gasp for breath, but he didn’t stop until he was almost suffocated by the stuffy underground dust. He looked around, saw what he wanted and then walked towards a metal door which led to the lifts that went all the way up to the cells.

  He planted himself in front of the door, knowing that Jochum Lang would be brought here on the way back to his cell.

  He only needed to wait for a minute or so before the four guards, two policemen and Lang came into view, heading towards the metal door.

  Ewert Grens went to meet them and asked the officers to wait a few metres away while he had a word with Lang. The officer in charge of the prisoner wasn’t best pleased, but agreed. Grens normally got what he wanted in the end anyway.

  They glared at each other, as they always did. Grens waited for Lang to react, but he just stood there, handcuffed, his large frame swaying as if he couldn’t decide whether to hit Ewert or not.

  ‘You stupid bastard.’ They were standing so close, Grens need do no more than whisper for Lang to hear. ‘You kept your mouth shut, as you always do. But you were remanded and you’ll be sentenced later. I know you didn’t kill Oldйus. But what are people to believe? As long as you behave like a villain, refusing to say anything, only to deny everything, I’ll tell you what they’ll do. They will make you pay. It will cost you six or seven years, on top of what you might have got regardless. Enjoy!’

  Ewert Grens turned and called the guards back.

  ‘That’s all, Lang.’

  Jochum Lang didn’t say a word, didn’t move, didn’t even turn to look at Grens when he was moved on by the guards.

  Not until the guards had opened the door and he was on his way through and Grens shouted for him to turn round. Then Lang turned and spat on the ground as the superintendent shouted at the top of his voice, reminding Lang about the body scan session, the way he had taunted him about his dead colleague and made kissing noises. Grens screamed, Do you remember? And the kisses were returned, flying through the air. Grens stood with pursed lips and made loud smacking sounds as Lang was led back to the lift and the cells.